Tuesday night stealth pixies

Nelson met at mine after work and around 6 we were heading for the hills.  Parked up top of Huntsbury Hill we ground our ways up the trail, no lights, setting a good pace.  Across the road and up Scott's Knob trail to the highest point where we turned round, lights on, and fanged it back down.  Much tighter this way than i'd thought it would be.

Back onto the road, up onto and around Vernon, picking up speed as we progressed before finally bailing off onto the side to let a bunch of climbers clamber past.  Back into gear and down the last switchbacks and through the top of Rapaki straight into the Witch Hill, techy rocky grunty wee climb round, cleaning it all sweetly, then swoopy fun down to the road.  Cruised up here, lights off, freaking out a couple of runners cos of our stealth mode, meeting them at the gate below the Tors.

Cruisey climb up to top of Castle Rock and we chilled out here, no wind here, for a few minutes before droppin' in.  I led the way, and was a bit pinbally to start, but got into the groove and got on down the trail nicely, flying into the first hairpin, on round down, wet spot from last time not so bad, and round the next hairpin and down over our cool rocky armoured section just before the wee wooden bridge before the climb up through the next usually wet spot, drained nicely, and on up.  At the next big mucky quagmire we stopped for about half an hour and messed about moving rocks, some huge, building it up and making two armoured bits which we rode back and forth on then continued our way out to the Bridle Path.

Turned around, and headed on back up and over the first section, cleaning our armoured repair, and then descended down through to our other armour, then the real climbing began, up round the first hairpin, across, and i dabbed through the second, but got pretty much all the rest of the climb til the last rocky grind near the top.  Onto the road down past the Tors, my back wheel had some squirrelly throbbing in it.  Flipped the bike at the gate and decided that it wasn't the rim, just the tire - not seated quite right...  oh well, onwards down the road, into Witch Hill and an excellent pace right in and through til a quick scoot-dab and then over down and around.

Through the top of Rapaki again, and back onto Vernon and up through the switchbacks, Nelson stomping on the gas, me just plodding on up at a steady pace, really feeling it in the legs on the last vestiges of climb.  Blatted down to the road, not quite as fast as normal cos my lights were both on dim.  Some comment from the boyracers missed, then onwards round the traverse til we dropped down the quick way onto Huntsbury, speeding down the gravel (after first running out of singletrack), then finally down the yumpy wee side track and back to the car.